


mix their mead with malice

by barrowjane



Category: Norse Mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 19:05:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/barrowjane/pseuds/barrowjane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is what they require him to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	mix their mead with malice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oneiriad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneiriad/gifts).



mix their mead with malice

-

"That one too is numbered among the Æsir whom some call slanderer of the Æsir and originator of deceptions and a stain of the Æsir and humans. His name is Loki...he is fair and handsome in appearance, bad of mind, very changeable in his ways. He had that form of wisdom beyond other men, which is called cunning, and he uses tricks in everything. He constantly brought the Æsir into great difficulty, and often rescued them with deceits."

_Gylfaginning_ , Chapter 33, trans. Stefanie von Schnurbein

-

They have taken his children. 

He has been a father many times now. Beyond that, he has been a mother. He has sired children, and has felt in turn a child grow within the sinew and bones of a changed form, cradled and cared for over the long months. 

And now, one of his sons is dead, slain to be the instrument that binds him. This has not happened yet, he knows, even though it has already happened, a future endlessly occupying the same space as his past.

Tenses are difficult things to manage at the best of times, let alone now (then) when Yggdrasil shakes and trembles (has trembled-will tremble) with the knowledge of what is to come and the Norms watch as silent shades.

None of this has happened yet, but it is all already happening. 

And they have taken his children.

The poison drips into his eyes, and Loki bares his teeth in something like a grimace or a laugh.

-

The needle easily pierces through the flesh of his upper lip, a pain as sharp as the metal itself. The burning drag of cord through the hole ripped in his flesh is perhaps worse. The first was quick and sudden, almost as surprise for all that he knew it was coming; the latter, though – that stays with him, a dog shadowing his heels. 

He can't quite decide which of the two is worse. Luckily, he supposes, the dwarf is going to give him plenty of opportunities to weigh the two, as the needle tears through his lower lip, and Brokkr pulls the thread taut. Loki chokes on his pain and the taste of blood in his mouth, crowding with the bile and hate burning in the back of his throat. 

Before them, the Æsir stand in silence. Odin stands tall, Gungnir held by his side. Frey's boar sits beside him and Sif's new hair, more beautiful than what his trick had taken, shines in the light of the boar's faintly glowing bristles. 

Thor holds Mjölnir in his hand, the hammer that will never fail or falter, never miss, and always return to the hand of its bearer. One of the greatest weapons in all the realms of gods or men.

He has given them such gifts, and Brokkr passes the needle through his flesh once again. Loki's blood is beginning to drip from his chin, and the Æsir do not speak a word.

-

Silence weighs uneasily upon him, and it is a relief when he works the small magics holding the threads that bind his mouth free. He has weathered a thousand spoken and silent insults, unable to answer with words that would ring surer than any of their steel.

But that is ended, now, and one would have to look very closely to see the small, silvering scars that mar his lips. 

They call him Liesmith, he knows, so he strides into the great hall and speaks nothing but the truth. All their truths, laid bare for all to hear.

They are cowards and murderers, liars and whores. They are guilty of treason and treachery, incest and adultery. They have destroyed worlds and committed genocide, and given Yggdrasil more cause to tremble than he ever has. 

They are gods, and perhaps, they are monsters. 

He tells them so. As audiences go, they are less than appreciative. 

Quiet, they hiss. Silence, liar, wicked, wolf's-father. Tyr's single hand clenches as if he longs for his sword, and Loki knows his son's teeth are as sharp as Loki's tongue. 

Thor threatens him, at first. It is a language they both understand. 

"Be silent, Liesmith," he says, brandishing Mjölnir before him. "Be silent, lest I send you to dwell with your daughter."

Loki laughs. He has no need of silence, not now, not again, and besides, what father would fear his own children?

"We will all dwell in her company, ere long," he says, and his words linger in their feasting hall longer than he does.

He is prepared for a fight when Thor finds him, later. Instead, Thor stares at him for long moments. It is unsettling; the god of thunder is many things, but quiet and thoughtful are not numbered among his qualities.

"Why do this, Loki? Why prod at wounds you know to still be bleeding? Must you always and ever play the villain?" Thor asks, finally, and Loki pauses, arrested by the question and its unusual source in equal measure. It is more than he expected from the brute.

Why? There are a thousand thousand answers he could give, and all of them would be true.

Because you lost not a drop of blood or sweat for that hammer you hold, and I had my lips sewn shut on its behalf. Because you think me weak for having birthed a child, and call me woman and whore and worse behind my back or to my face. Because I will never best you in swordplay, but in this magic of words and secrets I am a greater king than the All-father. Because you require it of me, and this mummer's farce would crumble the moment I did not step out to play my part. Because I am bound by more rules than you, and yet by none at all. Because you have taken my children. 

"Because I can," he answers, instead, and it is no less true than any of the words he did not speak.

-

Frigga does not ask him why. Frigga does not speak to him at all. 

"Really, though, all the plants but one?" he manages, though the words have to fight past the pain in his ribs. The Æsir were not kind to him, when they finally caught him. Oh, but he made them work for it, made they give proper chase, the sort of which songs will be sung, the Æsir's pursuit of the villainous Loki. They will enjoy telling it, he thinks.

He is a villain. He loved the doing of it, the complex and elaborate trap he wove. He is responsible for Baldr's death. 

He has done everything they required of him.

"What did you expect, writing out an invitation such as that? And then - testing his dear immortality so. Already he was one of the most blessed of the gods, and you made him better still. Invincible. It hurt to look at him, he shone so brightly. And you thought I would leave that alone? Let my daughter give him back to you once she had him? You thought I would weep for him?"

His voice is level and even. They might be having a polite conversation, were it not for the way Frigga's hands tighten into fists by her side, knuckles and bone showing white against the smooth skin.

Flawless, all of them. It had been better, when he had stolen the apples. When they were wrinkled and withering, when the perfection of their exteriors could no longer disguise the years that lay within. It had been better.

"All this because dear Baldr had a bad dream," he says. Hisses, really, the words coiling like a serpent. He will know a great deal about serpents, before this is all done. He already does; his son's coils wrap about all the world of men. 

"It's nearly impressive, really. The indomitability of a mother's love," he continues, and might say yet more, but the others return, and Frigga speaks, finally, though not to him.

"Bind him," she says, and does not look to him at all.

-

Once, Loki roasted a woman's heart on a fire lit of branches of linden-wood, and he ate of it before it had cooked. The meat burned his tongue, and he had to worry at the tough muscle with his teeth for some time before he could manage to swallow the first bite. He had not bothered to add salt or sweetening it, and the woman had known little enough kindness in her life to otherwise season the meat. 

It tasted as bitter as sorrow, and it was lovely in the way things soft and sweet could never hope to be.

When he was finished, and wore a shape that was not his own, another woman came to him, then, her magics bright and wild. She filled him with her ills, and in time that wickedness grew strong within him, until he gave birthed a brood that was dark and terrible. He is the mother of monsters, and when the tales strive so hard to stress the latter, they forget that the former is just as true.

They are all his children, though of all the stories they tell of him, rarely do they recall that one. 

-

Above, in the world of men, there is nothing but cold and driving snow. The men think their gods have abandoned them, Loki knows. Those that believed stopped the second time their world failed to bring forth a summer, the second time the winter did not end.

Loki knows the harsher truth. Men should not despair at the thought of their gods abandoning them, but rejoice. Their gods have never cared for them, and now their gods – now he – has doomed them all.

With one hand, Sigyn holds the bowl that collects the poison from Odin's snake. With her other, she traces a quiet, wondering hand over the lines so many years of pain have etched into his face.

"You seem almost pleased, by all of this," she says, quietly.

Loki smiles, and does not speak.

-

"...an axe age, a sword age,  
shields are cloven,  
a wind age, a wolf age,  
before the world collapses."

- _Völuspá_ , trans. Henry Adams Bellows

**Author's Note:**

> This has been an entertaining exercise in trying to work with multiple Norse myths at once, particularly since Norse myths (especially those dealing with Loki) contradict the hell out of each other, chronologically speaking. If there's mythological hand-waving in here, it's mostly to do with how the Lokasenna referencing Baldr's death, as something Loki has already done, though not been punished for. Chronology is fun!
> 
> The title for this comes from a line of the Lokasenna, ie, the one wherein Loki calls out the Norse gods on their shit. 
> 
> There are a number of different scholarly editions of the eddas and sagas, and I recommend those for more fun with Norse mythology. The ones I defaulted to for quotations were those out of copyright and thus in public domain, more out of necessity than personal preference.


End file.
